Amazon's $750M Queensland Bet, Von Dutch's $100M Comeback & The Spam Fine Every Brand Should Read

Mal and Alex are back halfway through March with another Australian-heavy episode — covering everything from a $702K spam fine to a $750 million Amazon warehouse landing in Queensland. The week's stories are a useful reminder that the rules around consumer trust, brand authenticity, and competitive infrastructure are all tightening at once.

This episode spans compliance wake-up calls, a 17-year trademark saga finally resolved in an Australian designer's favour, a bold strategy to reshore premium fashion manufacturing, and two deep dives into what brand longevity actually looks like — one a $100M nostalgia revival, the other a cautionary tale about losing sight of your customer.

• Lululemon's $702K Spam Act Fine — Lululemon was hit with a $702K ACMA fine for emailing unsubscribed customers and embedding promotional content in transactional emails — a reminder that enforcement is ramping up and the maximum penalty is $2.2M per day.
• Dolls Kill False Urgency Class Action — The US brand is facing a class action for running sales that outlasted their advertised end times, raising the broader point that manufactured urgency erodes consumer trust whether or not it ends in litigation.
• Katy Perry vs. Katie Perry — Australian Designer Wins — After a 17-year trademark battle, Sydney-based fashion designer Katie Perry has won the right to her own name in the High Court, underlining the importance of registering trademarks early before someone more famous comes along.
• RM Williams & Australian Fashion Council's 10-Year Manufacturing Strategy — RM Williams and the Australian Fashion Council have tabled a strategy to grow the domestic fashion and textiles industry from $27B to $38B by reshoring premium manufacturing — leaning into what Australia can actually win at globally.
• Amazon's $750M Robotics Fulfilment Centre in Queensland — Amazon is building a four-level, double-Suncorp-Stadium-sized fulfilment centre in Logan, fast-tracked by the Queensland government in just 35 days, which will make next-day delivery even more of a baseline expectation for Queensland shoppers.
• Von Dutch's $100M Comeback — Von Dutch has quietly crossed nine figures in global revenue by licensing its IP rather than manufacturing — proof that the 20-year nostalgia cycle is real, and that brand heritage can be monetised without owning a single factory.
• Witchery x Pip Edwards & Lara Worthington Collab — The campaign attracted criticism for a "hobo chic" aesthetic that felt misaligned with Witchery's core customer and tone-deaf given current cost-of-living pressures — a sharp lesson in knowing your customer before chasing cool.